Why VB 6.0??

[dglienna]

I bet it is slower too.

You'd be wrong there. I had an app that had to call 26 batch files to get semi-concurrent operation.

Using VB.Net, I can create individual threads and execute them at the same time.

Went down from 40 to 6 minutes. Not exactly 'slower'

[WillAtwell]

However EVERYTHING from MSDN is for development, evaluation and test. For example you can download Office (or use it from your CD/DVD to develop a program that utilizes Word Automation. However if you write a single document for actual use (a note to your mother), then you are in violation of the agreement.

The same is true for the developer tools.

This has subtly changed in the past year as reflected in the pricing. For $10,000 (approx) you get the full MSDN for 1 year - WITH a valid SINGLE DEVELOPER / SINGLE MACHINE license for the Visual Studio 2008.

$1,199 for the pro version subscription single user right now on thier site.

Also as I pointed out the products can be purchased from third party vendors, Amazon for example has VB6 and VS6 as do several other vendors. Surely you are not trying to tell us that if you buy these retail products that you are not allowed to use them for the very thing they were intended to do.

Even on the MSDN the lic says they are for development which is exactly what you do with VB develop applications which will later be used most likely by someone other than the person who wrote the program. If one were not allowed to do this then the program would be totally worthless.

[BytePtr]

Joeman

I agree with your two posts completely. I have nothing to add.
Very good answers.

[George1111]

A number of successful Accounting Application Companies felt committed to follow the new trends in development and invested heavily in Dot Net when it was first released. Little did they know that Microsoft would "re-invent" the technology with the release of VS 2005 and now VS 2008.

This has caused development to escalate -
a) Dramatically in Time
b) Dramatically in Cost

More concerning is that the technology not only cause a change in direction in development techniques, but also in the amount of harward you need to throw at it to make it work. This was all further exasperated by the release of Vista.

Some will not survive the experience (and lose millions) - you may say BAD LUCK - No.. its Microsoft LUCK - Pity MS got it wrong to start with. (But what should they care)

I have learned painfully that getting in on the 'NEW STUFF' too soon will only cause you pain - waste of time - waste of money. If its your own business this will mean something to you. If you work for someone who pays the bills regardless - why should you care ?

I work for myself so I have to care.

In the meantime, VB6 developers continued to live a reasonably normal life (not sure why they should be concerned about lack of support - there are no problems). Compare that to living with VISTA - totally supported and full of problems. (most of which are now sorted out)

I guess the question you asked should have been Why Dot Net ?

I hope you are not of the belief that ASP.NET is something to be admired - this has to be the great pack of rubbish ever presented to programmers.

And apart from the nice look of some of the controls I still am not sure why Dot Net can actually help make my life any easier, particularly with the pathetic help available in the IDE. I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO ONCE GET HELP WITH A SIMPLE EXAMPLE FOR ANYTHING. (from the IDE)

VB6 on the other hand was easy to learn as it was full of examples.

Perhaps Dot Net will be fine in about another 5 years when Microsoft get their act together in the HELP department and settle the operating systems that should run it - In the mean time WHO NEEDS PROBLEMS ?

OH, I do believe that a VB6 Application runs considerable faster than a DOT Net Application (but then I may be wrong).

I know I am not wrong - I demonstrated a DOT NET application to client, then showed him the same thing in VB6 (Accounting stuff). He said "How is it that your system is so responsive compared to the Dot Net ? DUH ?

Dot Net Applications perform as though they are constipated in my experience.

My most amusing experience was to try to create an ASP.NET application - admitedly I had to learn ASP.Net (Hence my previous biased comments). I battled with it for about 6 months with inconsistent display results and all the problems you may well understand.

In the end I gave up and wrote the application in 3 days using Terminal Services on a VB6 Application. OK - all that proves is that I can program much faster in VB6 than in ASP.NET - SO ????? Why should one bash their head on the Dot Net wall when there is no pain in an alternative.

What about Web Services ? I work with a company which exported Tab Delimitted files from a system to be processed. It took 2.5 minutes to do the export. Along came web services - it now takes 35 minutes to achieve the same export - DUH ?

Technically the application "may" be a "little" more flexible - practically it is now an academic exercise in Dot Net principles which the company defends as being cutting edge technology (another DUH??)

"I used to have a jet - Now I use a horse and cart " (with one hell of a stubborn horse ! )

[WillAtwell]

Dot net has its pros and cons for sure. There are some things that you can do with VB.net that you can not do in VB6, and some that are easy in VB6 and extremely hard in dot net.

A customer asked me to write an application for a MC1000 hadheld device running windows ce 4.x. One of the requirements was to print a barcode label on a portable printer. I said sure no problem.

How was I to know that they had not put any serial support into VB 2003? I was shocked and left to scramble for a solution which eventually came in the way of a third party control that I had to purchase to do the job. They did add serial support back into VB 2005 but it does not support CE 4.x Right now I have to have 2 machines with 3 versions of VB between them in order to do my job due to the fact that 2003 does not support CE 5 and 2005 does not support anything older than 5 also because the two do not work properly on the same pc, or at east not on the same OS.

A major gripe I have is the excessive time it takes to load the dot net ide and a project. I even upgraded my system to a dual core and 2 gigs of ram with Sata II HD and still loads very slowly. I also get errors in the IDE often when changing between the code and design windows on a form. The errors are not fatal but are really agravating and result in longer development times.

On the other hand after using dot net I find that I am always trying to use my scroller wheel in vb6 and it does not work. Which is agravating but not that big a deal.

I actually like both vb6 and dot net and will continue to use both currently 2005 on anything where I need to use it or where it is as easy or almost as easy to do in the dot net but still doing lots of stuff in VB6 as well and I wish I could get rid of 2003 but at present can not do so do to the way they handled the CE 4.x and 5.x situtations.

[dglienna]

I've been doing a LOT more with VS2008 than the prior version, that I have used, to some extent.

Two years ago, the documentation was a lot worse than it is today. I can find things pretty easily.

I'll have to disagree on the ASP.Net part also. There is a lot of samples out there. I edit my site with VS2008, or Expressions Web, depending on the task.

As for support, look back to my VB6 Capicom post. I want to support that product, but there seems to alternative but to disable the security that I built into the app a few years ago.

Odd that it doesn't work in the IDE as well.

[WillAtwell]

I have 2008 but not installed yet. Waiting on some hardware so I can install it on a new system. Learned my lesson a long time ago about installing new software on a development machine


Anyway for those who use 2008 do you know what versions of Windows Mobile and/or CE.Net it supports?

I know 2003 does not support CE.Net 5.0 and 2005 does not support CE.Net 4.x where both support PPC and WM.

I wonder what the chance is that 2008 supports both 4.x and 5.0 as well as the PPC and WM platforms?

[BytePtr]

I find that I am always trying to use my scroller wheel in vb6 and it does not work. Which is agravating but not that big a deal.

There is a very easy fix for that. So this is not problem anymore.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837910

[dglienna]

Anyway for those who use 2008 do you know what versions of Windows Mobile and/or CE.Net it supports?

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS2201413774.html

[WizBang]

Well, this topic has been beaten to death in other threads, and one fact which remains is that .net can be so easily decompiled, that it just isn't good for developing applications for the home PC market. That is of course unless you want to give your work away for free.

I still say .net is an alternative to Java, as both are more or less suited for the same markets. A company who has in-house programmers writing stuff for internal use may want to use it. A company developing applications for wide distribution is a different story.

As for VB6 support, what concerns me is that the finished product runs on the typical home PC, and not only do they still run, but will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. There doesn't seem to be such a need to update or patch VB6 from my prospective. Access to the win32 API allows VB6 to take advantage of new features and functions of the OS.

I'm sure at some point I'll move on to some other programming language, but it won't be .net. More like C++, Delphi, or one of the many Basic variants out there.

[TheCPUWizard]

Thanks for all of of the input. I do see that most are long-time users so my poll did not attract a big part of what I was interested in...People who are starting to use VB6.0 for development.

I do find alot of the criticism of .Net very interesting, as well as conflicting with my own professional experience [For those unaware I have run a software consulting from in New York since 1984 and have been delivering over 90% .Net based solutions for the past 5-6 years].

When properly used, the security features of .NET back it much harder to tamper with an application. Yes, "out of the box" .Net code is easier for a novice to reverse engineer the code. But for a professional, that really makes no difference. Look at the gaming industry, (nearly) all the code is by necessity highly optimized native code, yet there are tens of thousands of "hacks", "cheats", "hooks" that alter the behaviour of the game.

If these were financial programs the same result would yield (and has yielded) disaster.

I wonder....

How many of the people here have ever written a secure (ie passing DoD standards and qualifications) program in their life???

How many people use Code Access Security when writing .Net Code?

How many people have even read "Writing Secure Code"? ISBN 0-7356-1722

How many people DRM encrypt their application prior to deployment and use Ring 0 security and authorization?

How many people think they have a (native) program that I could not tamer with to alter its behavour?

[WillAtwell]

With a good memory editor and a little knowledge of how to use it one can alter the behaviour of pretty much any program in some way or another. The most common thing done in games is to change the amount of money a player has onhand or to change some other numeric value such as vital stats, experience, or some such thing. Quite often these changes do not actually happen to the exe at all but the save game files instead and most often the memory which then saves it to the save game file.

However hacking the memory of a pc or even an exe directly is quite a bit different than decompiling the program.

The last time I tried to decompile something it was a VB 3 program which was written by a former employee who took the source code with him when he left. The program was full of bugs and had to be updated and eventually rewritten but the first step was to decompile the exe and get as much useful code from it as possible. It was not very hard to decompile VB3 programs though it left you with no identifiable variable names and took a while to figure out what was going on.

[HanneSThEGreaT]

Another poll option can be added, entitled, "Why Not ¿"

I'm using VB 6, VB 2003, 2005, 2008 on my Vista machine at home without any hassles. In anyone of them, I can make stuff that works and do what it is supposed to. So what .NET is newer and VB 6 older, so what if support for VB 6 is getting less and less. I still feel that if you know any of these products well enough, you can do what you need. I've got hundreds of VB 6 apps still running without hassles, as so, I've got hundreds of VB.NET apps working, and doing what they're supposed to.

I know some may disagree with my point of view, and you're entitled to, but I'm not going to argue about which has disadvantages and advantages. Each one has its own pros and cons, accept it, as long as you get done what you get paid for

My 2 cents..

[GremlinSA]

I have simmular sentiments to Hannes about VB6 .. Spent almost 10 years getting to know VB4 5 & 6, and can quickly do alot of things with it.

While working with VB.NET, i'm not that up to date with all the available methods and procedures to complete certain tasks with it, i tend to fall back onto VB6 , something i know...

However i do take time to learn how to conplete the task in .NET and eventully will stop using VB6, how ever sometimes the project deadline does not allocate time for a learning curve...

My 2 cents too...

[TheCPUWizard]

Hannes, Gremmy...

I do understand where you are coming from...at least partially.

Heck, I still use Visual C++ 1.52. (It was the last compiler that would generate 16 it code - which I use on some controllers).

But....

1) Why would anyone start LEARN from something that is obsolete...

and

2) Why would anyone take the risk (as a developer or customer) of being in a totally unsupported position, when there are viable alternatives? Just knowing that on any given day, things could stop working, and the vendor could say "Yup...It does not work anymore, sorry we are not going to help you", would give me cause for concern....